Sun, Sep 28, 2025 page7

• Sheinbaum’s uneven first year

  • By Jorge G. Castaneda
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  On Wednesday, Mexico’s first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, is to begin her second year in office. While not necessarily coming through with flying colors, Sheinbaum has persevered in the face of complex domestic and foreign challenges — a victory in itself. Her accomplishments are nothing to sneer at: She has maintained a high approval rating, received glowing praise from the global press, overseen an apparent drop in homicides and remained on relatively good terms with the ever-capricious US President Donald Trump.

  However, like her predecessor and mentor, former Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Sheinbaum has so far proved unable to make headway on the most important challenges facing Mexico — even though her party, Morena, has been in power for seven years.

  For starters, there is the problem of Mexico’s chronically anemic economic growth. From the early 1990s, when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed, until 2018, when Lopez Obrador became president, average annual GDP growth was about 2.5 percent. The outlook has deteriorated sharply: Most forecasts put the growth rate for this year at barely above zero, and next year does not look much better. Low public and private investment, and only somewhat higher levels of foreign direct investment, augur that Sheinbaum’s six-year term would resemble Lopez Obrador’s, implying negative GDP growth from 2018 to 2030.

  Despite reductions in poverty and inequality, this economic trajectory does not bode well for Mexico, which cannot fix any of its major problems without growth. Many factors — including a poorly conceived judicial reform, Trump’s tariffs, and a possible renegotiation of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the successor to NAFTA — suggest that pessimism is in order. To forge a different growth path, Sheinbaum would need to change course radically — an impossible task given Lopez Obrador’s continuing influence.

  On law and order, Sheinbaum’s record seems better at first glance. Compared with Lopez Obrador’s “hugs, not bullets” approach to Mexico’s criminal cartels, she has been much more proactive. Homicides have decreased, arrests have increased, and, crucially, US officials are happier. Hardly a day goes by without a well-publicized seizure of fentanyl or other drugs at the border with the US.

  The numbers tell a different story. Despite homicides being down, disappearances are up: About 12,000 people were declared missing from October last year to July, compared with 9,500 to10,000 the year before. This has cast doubt on the Mexican government’s claims of a falling murder rate. Similarly, more than 30,000 people accused of “high-impact crimes” have been arrested under Sheinbaum, but the number of prisoners has risen by only 10,000, because many of the detained are quickly freed.

  Moreover, Sheinbaum inherited what amounts to a civil war in the state of Sinaloa, caused by the arrest of the eponymous cartel’s longtime leader, Ismael Zambada Garcia, and detention in the US in July last year. Despite sending thousands of troops to Culiacan, Sinaloa’s capital, she has been unable to quell the infighting. From September last year to August, more than 1,800 people were killed, and more went missing. The conflict recently prompted Sinaloa Governor Ruben Rocha Moya, widely suspected of having cartel ties, to cancel Independence Day celebrations for the second consecutive year.

  To be sure, organized crime is a complex problem that requires a multifaceted approach, and allowing US boots on the ground — a Trump administration demand that, so far, Sheinbaum has rejected — would probably not help, as demonstrated by the failure of the US’ “Plan Colombia” to curb drug production in that country. Even so, a growing share of Mexico’s population — up to one-third, according to some polls — is in favor of US military action against the cartels.

  One of the main factors fueling the drug trade is corruption. Despite promising an anti-graft push, Lopez Obrador’s administration is increasingly being viewed as one of Mexico’s most corrupt, owing to the growing array of scandals within the armed forces, which took over about 70 civilian functions during Lopez Obrador’s presidency. In addition to overseeing drug enforcement, the military was tasked with building huge infrastructure projects, distributing medicine, and, most importantly, managing customs operations.

  Corruption is deeply ingrained in Mexico’s armed forces. Following the Mexican Revolution, they maintained a tacit agreement with the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled unchallenged for seven decades, to stay out of politics and receive minimal support in exchange for being able to manage their own affairs with minimal transparency. Partly as a result of this agreement, Mexico has not suffered a coup or a coup attempt since 1938.

  However, the military’s new responsibilities under Lopez Obrador’s government created significantly more opportunities for enrichment. It was recently revealed that the Mexican Navy was involved in a fuel-smuggling scheme, whereby tankers full of diesel were marked as carrying additives and thus entered Mexico duty-free. A vice admiral has been indicted, and a rear admiral was murdered, allegedly for reporting the deception to then-Mexican secretary of the navy Rafael Ojeda Duran, who has also come under scrutiny. Given the huge amount of unpaid taxes, this ruse dwarfs previous corruption scandals.

  Sheinbaum has made some progress against this age-old scourge by attempting to go after mid-level officers in the armed forces. Ultimately, though, her close ties with Lopez Obrador prevent her from prosecuting the upper echelons.

  Governing Mexico is no easy feat: Few have done it successfully over the past century. In her first year, Sheinbaum confronted a fraught geopolitical environment and complicated challenges inherited from the previous administration, making the lack of progress on larger issues somewhat understandable. Sheinbaum must begin to address these problems, which would require her to complete her most perilous challenge: moving out of Lopez Obrador’s shadow.

  Jorge G. Castaneda, a former Mexican secretary of foreign affairs, is a professor at New York University and the author of America Through Foreign Eyes.

  Copyright: Project Syndicate
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